The life of a simple, honest man

This was taken way back in 1977 (I was just a month old) at Quezon City, Phil

My life is a complex mix of influence, thought and decisions. I am proud to say that my best decision in my life was to love the Lord Jesus as King of my life. Other men and women have influenced my life in incredible ways.

Lolo Amante, or Daddy Lolo, as we called him, was a mountain of a man in my eyes. His influence was the one I truly remembered when I was growing up. The wisdom he had and the love for his grand kids are what I remember.

Lolo passed away 15th June 2012 at 12pm MLA, survived by his loving wife, Felisa.

Daddy lolo has 9 children (7 girls and 2 boys with my mum being the eldest girl) and I was his first grandchild. It was family legend that the same month I was born the family was able to buy their first car and Daddy Lolo was promoted to be Vice President of the Government Service Insurance System (a Philippine Government incentive to provide affordable services like housing, medical, dental, optical, education and general insurances for government employees). That month brought great joy to the Rimando Clan.

My heart is filled with sadness as I type this. A man I loved and looked up to has departed. Yet a certain joy in my being is pushing away the melancholy. Daddy Lolo is a lover of Christ. His departure from this planet is met with an excitement of reunion in Heaven.

This man is the reason I am who I am today. My decision to be an entrepreneur started when I asked him if we Filipinos can ever be a first world country (me being a Filipino by heritage). His answer was, "The only thing that can change the Philippines is if there is a change in the Filipino's heart. The best way to do that is through a Renaissance. Start with educating the people."

A dream took root in my heart at that stage and my life seemed that it had purpose.

A First World Philippines!! What a thought. Thus bore my greatest dream and my greatest burden. A career life mistakenly lived for fast money in order to finance a seemingly Herculean dream.

Yet as I let friends and family into my dream I realize that not only does Providence provide ways for this Herculean dream to become reality, I have already started progress and I just have not noticed.

Thanks to my Lolo, I have focused my affections into seeing the following:

• 40 acres of land dedicated to a small Training Campus for general trade (carpentry, brick laying, plumbing) and an elementary school with room to become a high school with instructors from overseas (e.g. Gold License Australian Plumbers and Electricians training Pinoy candidates)
• Underprivileged families living in the complex with a 2 bedroom house per family residence.
• Small businesses funding the day to day expenses of running the complex
• Full scholarships for the children until the completion of high school
• Parents of the children have the choice to be employed in these small businesses or be trained to start their own small businesses or be trained to have internationally marketable trade skills from the Training Campus

The whole idea is to produce a generation of forward thinking, proud Filipino professionals with no Colonial dependencies and a rigorous passion to see a First World Philippines.

Though what I have seen I am lacking is my desire to do all of this alone. In this age of Global Villages, I am excited to see what the possibilities are linking like minded people together.

Thank you again Lolo. This has been your legacy to me.

What WoW Dads should do

I have been playing World of Warcraft since a few months after the release (that means since 2005) and I have loved and still love every aspect of the game.

Yet loving something like such which also requires time and attention means other areas of my life got neglected. My wife, my work, my pursuit of the promise of a close and intimate fellowship with the Almighty, all sacrificed at the altar of pixilated purple epics.

As I became a father, the realization of how to juggle what I sink my time into became more visceral. The cry of the child at 2am for a feed and I am just logging off a WoW raid is an all too familiar scenario of my past.

This is my first foray into today's blogging so please bear with me.

I found as a parent that I have to put priorities in order, as by doing so, it puts purpose on each minute you stay on line. Here are a few things I like to do whilst on line:

• Know why you log on - Each time you enter your password and your authentication codes know the purpose. Is it to level a toon? Is it to quest or to farm materials for an item? The clarification of "WHY" not only improves your productivity on line it most often gives you "more" time on the game
• Focus on one activity at a time - There are opportunities that call you all the time as a player on the major cities. Trade chat is always asking for tanks or Raid members (/pst iLvl and Achi or NTY) or the guild is always a hive of activity. If you logged on to do some gold making, focus on that. If you want to get better healing gear, do that instead and put the other activity on hold. Remember the reason or reasons you logged on for. As like in real life, trying to do everything just means you are liable to miss out on the best of things.
• Character Selection - What type of characters to play for maximum enjoyment of the game. Personally, I love instance grinding. I love getting gold from the AH and I just love the social aspect (confrontational or non) of the game. But the same time, I have 2 young kids who, if not in need of a cuddle, needs constant companionship before they are lulled into sweet sleep. Play to your strengths. If you are playing and one of the kids asked for you or your wife asked for your assistance, you will NEED to leave your group in the Random Dungeon Finder that you have waited for over 35 minutes to form. Hybrid classes offer tanking, dps or healing so you can easily find a group again. Got kicked from the group? The game also offers you a much more confrontational play style with PvP and the cooldowns from the "Deserter" debuff are separate from the RDF and PvP so if you needed to duck out and see to the kids you can easily do so.
•  Economic Interaction of the Goblin Kind - Questing gives gold at max level. Buy materials from the Auction house, craft an item that costs more to buy in the AH than material costs, sell it on the AH for pixelated gold so you can repeat the process. The act of crafting and selling on the auction house is, in my opinion is pure PVP. REAL player vs player. See these guys Euripides , Cold's Gold Factory , Flux (aka Jim) and enjoy an economic pvp in this digital world.

The reason I wanted to blog about this is to make all the WoW dads out there know that you too can enjoy the MMORPG's offered and still be a good father. It's all about prioritizing activities. For my life it has always been:

God

Lyn (my wife)

Kids

Business

Rest of Family

WoW

Whenever I have found an imbalance and things go astray, I tend to look back and contemplate on the list and see where I put one about the other.

I hope some of you have found this post helpful. Do not hesitate to leave a comment.

I look forward to our future correspondence.